As disclosed in my earlier patents, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,076,487; 6,287,351; 6,575,147; and 7,093,567; and my allowed patent application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/532,118, acetylene may be used to power internal combustion engines. As noted in those references, acetylene may provide many benefits, including environmental benefits and supply benefits.
Acetylene is traditionally produced from calcium carbide and water by submerging calcium carbide into large volumes of water, which creates a slurry byproduct that is generally unusable without additional processing and that is not environmentally friendly. The current invention relates generally to improved acetylene production.